A wide variety of floor care and maintenance machines have been developed for various aspects of floor treatment, including, for example, cleaning, scrubbing, finishing, buffing and stripping of floor surfaces. Such machines can be used on hard floor surfaces, such as concrete, tile and wood, as well as for carpet cleaning. Cleaning heads for these floor treating machines typically comprise a treatment surface, such as a pad or brush, that engages with the floor surface and that is connected to a rotary drive means. Cleaning heads having orbital-motion treatment surfaces have the ability to produce multi-directional treatment motions that enhance agitation and are especially effective for polishing or scrubbing. Cleaning heads used in typical orbital-motion floor treating machines impart orbital motion to the treatment surface using a drive train assembly in which force from a rotary drive means, e.g. an electric motor, is transmitted from a drive shaft to the treatment surface through a bearing assembly or flywheel that is eccentrically mounted on the drive shaft. For example, U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 2006/0150362 to Mitchell describes a floor treating machine that utilizes a cam-driven, rectangular treatment surface.
Cleaning heads for these orbital-motion floor treating machines can be used in walk-behind applications wherein the operator pushes the cleaning head using a cart or truck device. When using these machines, the operator must manually move the entire machine back and forth to create the desired treatment motion, while simultaneously advancing the machine in the desired linear direction. Such manual motion takes much effort and can potentially result in inadequate cleaning because of the inability of the operator to manually move the machine back and forth in a consistent motion. Conventional floor treating machines, orbital or rotary, include wheels that are either always engaged with the floor, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,839,479 to Hruby, or wheels that are connected to various adjustment mechanisms for the wheels, as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,675,246 to Arones and U.S. Pat. No. 3,027,581 to Holt.